The Lamborghini Jalpa Is the Forgotten 1980s Baby Lambo

this is a 1985 lamborghini yopa and it is the forgotten and very quirky entry-level model in lamborghini's lineup long before the gallardo and the huracan there was this the yopa which was the entry level model throughout the 1980s beneath the countach in lamborghini's lineup the yopa is tremendously rare and today i'm going to review it [Music] before i get started be sure to check out cars and vids which is my enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era we've sold some amazing cars recently on cars and bids including this land rover discovery camel trophy participant vehicle which sold for ninety thousand dollars this bmw 740i with an engine and manual transmission swap from an m5 which sold for over 28 thousand dollars and this mercedes r63 amg which sold for over 38 000. the v8 minivan if you're looking to sell your cool car from the modern era cars and bids is the place to do it you'll get the most views and the most bids and interest on your car and if you're looking to buy a cool car from the modern era check out cars and bids with daily auctions and great selection at carsandbins.com i've borrowed this yappa from a viewer here in san diego and i'm going to start with a little overview a lot of younger lamborghini fans think that the gallardo was the original entry-level lamborghini but that's not true lambeau tried its hand with some entry-level cheaper models earlier in its history there was the uraco throughout the 1970s and this the yolpa was the entry model in the 1980s the yalpa debuted in 1981 and it had a 3.5 liter v8 that made about 250 horsepower this was technically a rival to the ferrari 308 but the yalpa was far more powerful however lamborghini didn't have anywhere near the brand presence of ferrari at the time this car was on sale and lambo only managed to sell about 400 yalpas over a decade throughout the whole 1980s before this car was canceled after 1988. and today i'm going to review the yappa a very special very rare old-school lamborghini first i'll take you on a tour of this and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of the yelp by getting in the door handle is right here this silver piece facing the opposite direction that it should be for right-handed people to easily open it which of course is most of the population but if you twist your hand all the way around you can open up the door and enter the ergonomic disaster that is the lamborghini yappa let's get started indeed you climb inside this car and you start to realize pretty quickly that nothing is exactly where it should be or where you'd expect take for example the climate vents there are two of them only two and they're right in the center kind of near your legs that's it those are the only climate vents for this interior except there are climate vents for the windshield defogger and there are three of those mounted in the normal spot on the top of the dashboard so the windshield has three climate vents but the actual passengers only get two vents and they're located very low in the interior okay and things get quirkier and more nonsensical from there you have two levers to the left of the climate vents the lower one is for heat you can lift that up and that gives you heat no air conditioning in this spot we'll come back to that above that you have the defroster if you move that up that i guess will send the air to the vents on the dashboard so that it can defrost or defog the windshield okay that makes sense but what about the other climate controls ah yes they are scattered all throughout this interior in random places for instance the control for the air conditioning is on the dashboard right here you twist it and then you can turn on the air conditioning and you can see the notations for what this dial does are printed to the right of this knob except they're printed too far over by accident and so they almost fall off this leather panel and they got caught up in the stitching because lamborghini didn't think that through as for the fan speed that is also on the dashboard but this time over by the steering wheel behind the windshield wiper stock on the other side of the radio you twist that and then you can raise or lower the fan speed like in a lot of different vehicles so we're having some interesting placement of climate controls and this trend continues in the center control stack you can see two buttons also for fan speed an upper one and a lower one to raise or lower the fan speed so what does that dial do that i just showed you you got fan speed buttons and a fan speed dial and they're separate some are buttons in the middle one is a dial behind the steering wheel they seem to have the same function so what is going on there and as if that wasn't weird enough to the left of the steering wheel you have another button with a fan on it i have no idea what this does i'm not even going to touch this one there are all sorts of fan and climate buttons all throughout this interior laid out with approximately the same logic as airplane crash debris you have some buttons in the center some are dials on either side of the radio some are next to the vents they just kind of threw them where they had space and none are really consistent but the climate controls are nowhere near the most nonsensical thing in this interior there are so many others to cover let's go back for a second to that windshield wiper stock if you look closely you can see this stock doesn't actually come off the steering column instead it comes out of the dashboard which is unusual you don't see a lot of stocks coming out the dashboard they're normally coming off the steering column but lambo didn't do that here now i think that's because the ignition switch took up all the space where the wiper stock would normally be but lambo was already making this wiper stock for other models so they figured ah let's just stick it in the dashboard and that's what they did a very strange decision now the turn signal stock on the other side is coming out of the steering column just like normal and it contains the horn you press the end of the turn signal stock and that activates the horn which was actually somewhat common in older cars what wasn't common is how the horn sounds which is insane take a listen ah the nice musical note horn singing you a song instead of telling you to get out of the way but we are nowhere near finished with the bizarre decisions in the lamborghini galpa interior let's go back to the center control stack these buttons you can see eight separate buttons in here interestingly this is where the headlights are located right in the middle over on the left you have the headlights and the parking lights over on the right you have the fog lights front and rear in the middle left you have the hazard lights and the light dimmer switch and then you have the climate control fan controls so eight different buttons six are lighting related and then two are randomly placed climate control buttons very smart thinking also randomly placed in here is the warning that says unleaded fuel only that's important information but i'm not sure why it's here most cars had that next to the fuel door where it made a lot of sense rather than right in the center of the interior where you probably won't remember it when you're filling up with fuel outside the car but lambo decided to do that limbo also decided to stick the clock here you can see it's this kind of chintzy looking 80s digital clock nothing particularly special for a lamborghini like you might expect sorry but there is another clock below this clock in the radio controls and you can see the times do not even come close to matching and i strongly suspect that even if you adjusted the clock so that the times did match it wouldn't be long before they figured out some way to get off sync again it's just a lambo way now for proof of that lambo way and the rather questionable quality of which they did things take a look at the tachometer which is currently reading around 2000 rpm which seems like a fairly accurate and acceptable reading for a tachometer if it wasn't for the fact that the car is off completely off and yet the engine is doing 2000 rpm according to the tachometer fine italian craftsmanship but anyway even with all the strange lamborghini decisions in this interior they did get one thing right the window switches this car has power windows which is pretty nice for its time and the switches are right in the middle where you'd expect them and they operate exactly how you'd expect you press them down and the windows go down you press them up and the windows go back up except that they don't really instead they take forever to go back up have a look and so just when you thought they got something right with the placement of the window switches that is the state of the windows and there are some other interesting decisions in this center console for instance this car has a dogleg shift pattern which means that first is down and to the left rather than up and to the left like in most cars instead up and to the left you have reverse which is a bit of an issue because you don't want to accidentally hit reverse when you're trying to shift into first now fortunately lamborghini thought of this and there's this little lockout mechanism you can move this little switch over and it will prevent the transmission lever from going into reverse unless you move the switch the only problem here is this lockout is just manual which means that you have to put it in place after you shift out of reverse so if you forget then it doesn't really have any purpose and you'll shift into reverse accidentally which is what the lockout is trying to prevent because it's just not really all that good and speaking of some bizarre lever and switch decisions to the left of the steering wheel way over to the side you have the power mirror control nice to see this car has power mirrors but you can see it was an absolute afterthought this control doesn't look like any other switch or button in the car and they just tacked it on there at the very end probably make this car seem just a little bit more appealing with power mirrors it just doesn't belong same deal with the odometer reset switch which is this this little button next to the odometer resets the trip odometer and again total afterthought it is the only silver control in this entire car but they stuck it in there and it's silver and it's unlabeled you just have to know it's almost like they forgot to add a trip odometer reset and so they stuck that in at the last minute from whichever supplier they could find oh it's silver doesn't matter just put it in and make it work anyway next up we move on to the glove box now you're supposed to open the glove box right down here there's a little lever that you move and then it opens unfortunately the lever has broken off but you can still kind of do it you move it over to the side and this is how the glove box opens it's bottom hinged and it comes toward you and then you're in the glove box and this is what the glove box looks like of a lamborghini yelp other interesting things on the passenger side in the footwell you can see there's a little spot where a fire extinguisher could be strapped in which is probably a good thing italian car from this era you really want to be carrying a fire extinguisher with you at all times and actually i feel a little better if there was one in there right now unfortunately there's not also in the passenger footwell you can see this piece this is supposed to be a foot rest for the passengers not quite sure why it was necessary but lamborghini put it in a lot of its models from this era so the passengers could place their feet on that foot rest i guess instead of the carpeting in front of it seems strange now with all this said all these bad crazy nonsensical decisions in this interior a complete disaster there is one ergonomic thing that i really like in here and that would be the door closer the place where you insert your hand to close the door is in this little pouch you stick your hand in here and close it and that way the ugly door closer isn't just like sitting there obvious at all times it's kind of hidden and out of place and it perfectly mimics exactly where you'd want to stick your hand the motion you'd want to do in order to close the door that is pretty nice by the way one other item worth noting in this interior behind the seats you can see there's actually decent room back here that's because that's where you're supposed to put the roof the roof of this car comes off it's a target top car and you take the roof off and you can put it behind the seats and there's some straps that hold it in place and then you can drive with the roof off and you don't have to leave it behind wherever you go that way if it starts raining you have the roof with you you can just throw it back on now i'm not going to remove the roof because this car has been in storage for a long time and i'm not sure if the roof has been off for like two decades and i don't want to screw anything up but i do want to talk about the engine now the yelpa was a mid-engined supercar and to get back here to the engine you pull in this little latch in the driver's side door jamb you pull it up that unlatches the engine cover you lift it off and this is the situation you're faced with a 3.5 liter v8 in this car that makes about 250 horsepower that doesn't seem like much by modern standards but its rival at the time the ferrari 308 ferrari's entry level model only had like 215 or 220 horsepower so this was a muscle car by comparison you would think that would have translated to far better sales but the problem at the time was lamborghini just wasn't as well known as ferrari their company's future was in jeopardy perpetually throughout the 70s 80s and 90s they didn't have a big dealership network and so lambo just didn't sell that many of these even though they technically had the power advantage over the 308. and next up the strange decisions with this car just keep coming the obviously a mid-engine car and most mid-engine cars have their cargo area in the front but not the alpa instead it was in the back you could open up the little trunk compartment back here with the key and then you had your cargo area sharing the rear of the car with the engine now the trunk lid itself doesn't stay up with like a hydraulic or a prop instead you kind of got it into its top position and just sort of kept it up with hopes and prayers but when it is up you can see both rear compartments up the engine compartment and the cargo compartment in the back in this car now the cargo area back here is surprisingly large actually you have a lot of space back here which is one reason why lambo may have put the cargo area in the back instead of the front there's just more space and you do have room for some good storage back here even compared to modern exotic sports cars and next up around the rear of the alpa let's talk badging i've always loved the yalpa badge back here it looks so 1980s just unbelievably 1980s font and design it clearly indicates what era this car came from in case you couldn't tell with everything else although it's pretty obvious i also want to talk pronunciation yalpa yapa that is the more correct way to say it it is not jalpa technically it's a spanish word so i guess it should be like hyopa or hyalpa but it is not japa most people mispronounce that because most people have never seen one of these or heard one described but the technical correct way to say it is yappa or hyalpa like the name wan juan that's how you say that word not jalpa but anyway back to this car's 1980s this the badge design in back but also its most distinctive 1980s feature was the headlights this car has pop-up headlights as a lot of sports cars did back in the 80s you can see right now they are in the down position but if you turn on the lights you can see they pop up and then the lights are on and then of course you can see better at night that is after all the purpose of headlights you can of course put the headlights back down and then they go back down and the car has a more aerodynamic shape and you can put them up or down and play with this kind of novel feature today although it was pretty common of a lot of sports cars in the 1980s and the early 90s and finally since i'm on the outside of the alpha let's talk styling this car has a very 1980s look to it this wedge shape like a lot of 80s exotic cars had you have no curves anywhere on this design like you started to see in the 90s exotic cars it's a very very 80s look in this car certainly dates itself based on its styling and appearance if the 80s looking badge didn't already tell you now like i mentioned this was the base model in lamborghini's lineup back in the 1980s when the countach was the car that everybody wanted that was the hot crazy exciting lambo that got all the magazine covers and this always kind of played second fiddle to that and lamborghini just was never as successful with this car as they were with the crazier styled more aggressive more powerful higher performance countach this was always sort of the baby lambo which frankly it was as a result lamborghini only sold about 400 of these over an eight-year production span they are tremendously uncommon cars and they're starting to see their values go up as other vintage lamborghinis are getting more valuable these which once sold for 25 35 000 are now trading in the high 80 90 low 100 120 range because they're just becoming desirable and they're hard to find and by the way speaking of pricing back when this car was new it was around 65 000 which translates to about 130 000 in today's money compare that to a new huracan which is the new version of this car that starts around 210 000 before many many additional options so this was kind of a bargain at least by modern standards and so those are the quirks and features of the lamborghini yappa now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the yalpa this is an experience this is one of the ultimate perks of my job i love driving all the new stuff and checking out what's new and interesting but these old cars that are incredibly rare and have a totally bizarre experience this is where the most interesting stuff is now the story of this car is almost unbelievable you may have seen the video that the plates expired in the 90s the car has very old tires on it the owner told me that he bought this car in the late 90s he was given a 25 000 bonus at work and he went to the lamborghini dealership here in la jolla and he said what can i get for 25 grand and they had the alpha and he bought it he's headed ever since but it was in storage for the last 20 years he had a kid he got busy whatever and only in the last year is he decided to take it out and get it back into nice shape and get it running again and frankly it's pretty good for a car it's been stored for this long it feels like it's driving pretty well and it's in fantastic cosmetic shape inside and out so what is it like to drive the yalpa well it is nothing like driving a modern exotic car there is a fairly heavy clutch although not as heavy as i was expecting given other exotics from this era you also have surprising amount of room in here i say surprising because a lot of these exotics from this era were very tiny inside including some lambos that i've driven that were older than this car but someone must have said to lambo many customers i'm sure complained hey i can't even fit in this thing and so lambo made it more user-friendly basically it actually is not that easy to drive the steering is also not that heavy which is pretty impressive because it doesn't feel like power steering um and then you have a not that heavy clutch you have a gated shifter which is always of course pretty cool the owner told me that when he's driving it around everybody thinks that it's a pantera and i didn't i never put that together because to be a very distinctive cars but it does kind of have a pantera look to it to be totally honest i don't want to push it too hard on these old tires and the brakes also feel now i wouldn't call them old and i the owner has really mechanically refurbished the car and i suspect it's running well but i think that the brakes just are not that good i think that's just sort of a reality of exotic cars from this era it just doesn't feel like modern cars do getting on the highway here man it sounds so good i know it's just a v8 and it was sort of the baby lamborghini of its day but it sounds this is such an interesting and cool car i would absolutely freak out if i saw one of these on the road you know most people have no idea what it is or they think it's a patera some old car whatever i know how rare the alpha is i've never seen one randomly just driving around never in my life and so this is a pretty special occasion frankly this car has some vibration through the steering steering wheel undoubtedly a result of the old tires and also the fact that it is a 40 year old lamborghini and i bet even if you got it in the perfect shape it would have some vibration through the wheel the thing i love about cars like this is they just feel like such an amazing sense of occasion modern lamborghinis are cool don't get me wrong i love the huracan which is basically the modern equivalent of this but this thing's shifting the gears and smelling i mean it smells like fuel oil all these older lambos do italian cars in general and that's just cool i don't know i think it's a i think it's such a neat experience this car is just so cool these are now selling for real money i think a really nice one which this isn't but it's pretty nice i think in a long-term owner which is cool i think a really nice one is probably in the low 100s maybe 120 130 for a good one kind of a rough one probably in the 80s 90s this one's probably somewhere in the middle but that's a pretty good number considering i mean i remember for years these were 25 35 000 cars nobody wanted anything to do with like the crappy lambo everybody wanted the countach nobody wanted this but now that countaches are unaffordable and now that lamborghini's star is on the rise these are becoming more valued and more special really love the old-school engine sound of course really love shifting the gears myself and through the gated shifter which feels great it's just this vintage experience that you can't really get anymore in a modern car and so nobody really cares if this is the fastest thing on the road it's just fun it's just neat and so that's the lamborghini yappa this is a rare special and exciting old-school lamborghini and an often forgotten one by most car enthusiasts but i like the weird cars and this is certainly one of the weird cars especially from a lamborghini perspective and frankly this car is pretty exciting to drive and thrilling to look at anyway now it's time to give the yalpa a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the yopa isn't beautiful but it's cool looking for sure and it gets a 6 out of 10. acceleration 0-60 is in a low 6-second range and it gets a 3 out of 10. handling is average i'm sure at the time it was considered fantastic but these days with some age and many years of improvements in other cars it only gets a 5 out of 10. fun factor is high though given the sound and the sheer experience of driving an italian exotic sports car and it gets a 7 out of 10. finally cool factor it's very cool these are highly rare and very special it would certainly draw my attention at cars and coffee and it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 28 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features it has only the basics and it gets a 2 out of 10. comfort is fine though it's a bit cramped and not exactly luxurious and it gets a 3 out of 10. quality is poor everything works and it's fine but the interior isn't nice reliability is well known to be problematic and you wouldn't want to trust this car on a long trip it gets a three out of ten practicality is normal for a car like this and it gets a two out of ten finally value and i think these are still undervalued given the low production numbers and the cool old-school italian driving experience it gets a 7 out of 10 for a total daily score of 17 out of 50. added up and the dug score is 45 out of 100 which places it here against some similar cars i've never reviewed a ferrari 308 but i've driven them and i like the yalpa a bit better but the 308 is more reliable and it has a more classic look ultimately the yalpa is a rare and special car that we'll continue to appreciate as it's just hard to find one and more and more people want that old-school italian car feel [Music] and you're supposed to stick the roof behind the seats and that way you could and the door doesn't stay open either you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 573,866

Keywords: lamborghini jalpa, jalpa, lamborghini jalpa review, jalpa review, lambo, lambo jalpa, old lambo, old lambo review, 1980s lambo, lambo review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: XS1tBPzIzAU

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/CodewortSchinken]

He already did a review at the jalpa years ago back in 2014. I actually liked that alot.

[u/pryan886]

We never got resolution on the competing fan controls. I’m guessing one was for the defroster and one was for the “heat” vents since those seemed to be on independent circuits already, so maybe it they also had separate fans too…

As for the third “fan” switch on the left that was just a button, I suspect this was a switch to force the radiator fan to turn on. The cooling airflow in an older mid engine car probably wasn’t great, and you could flip that on to keep air moving when sitting in traffic.

Just a few guesses though. 1980s Italian sports cars were known for style, excitement and speed. Interior ergonomics? Who cares?

[u/pryan886]

I’m disappointed at the lack of 80s music and cocaine jokes (removable visor mirror is peak 80s). The first Jalpa review is early Doug at his quirkiest.

Edit: On the plus side that one had a working tachometer (although the speedometer is stuck at 30 🤷🏻‍♂️). Also, it seems Doug’s been working on his upper body. Way less groaning and complaining when he’s turning the steering wheel in the new video.

[u/Xorondras]

Why would right-handed people need to use their right hand to open the driver door?
You open the driver door with your left and the passenger door with your right hand, otherwise you're standing in the way of the door...

[u/Friends513]

Wow, what a cool one! No idea this existed until Doug showed a cars and bids ad on one of his videos a few months back. What a story about the purchase and storage situation... and also, that V8 sound. Bloody hell

[u/imped4now]

My God, that interior is so awful.

This is a perfect example to show just how far the industry as a whole has come when it comes to design, fitment, finish and overall QC.

[u/Michelanvalo]

Lamborghini sourced the door handles from the Leftorium for this car.

[u/Rrysiu]

How does it compare to the first Jalpa review you did, some years ago?

[u/Lanhorn9]

Wow when I saw this thumbnail, and the teaser of it from a previous video, I really did think it was a Pantera as well! I knew about the Jalpa but I guess I never paid attention to the way they looked.